Heavy snowfall in Wyoming
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Webcam shot of US 26, Wind River Lake, WY – 13 June 2017
(0.7 miles west of Teton/Fremont County Line)
See more webcam views:
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Thanks to J Philip Peterson for this link
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June 13, 2017 at 09:52AM
WUWT at 10+ years – I need some help, please
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Hello everyone,
I feel like many of you are family, you’ve been with me and this endeavor so long. I started in November of 2006, and I’m approaching my 11th year. In all that time, WUWT has been providing a daily service to readers with original research, commentary, and humor where appropriate.
During this time, we’ve witnessed many great things together: Climategate started here in 2009, and the implosion of the Copenhagen conference as a result. The unmasking of the IPCC, showing that many of the “voodoo science” claims against skeptics made by IPCC chairman Pachauri, were based on fake data, shockingly bad science, and even grey literature. Now the tables are turned, and he’s out in disgrace. Then there was the time that I proved without a doubt that both Al Gore and Bill Nye were not just incompetent, but liars too, faking a science experiment. That finding by me was later backed up by a peer reviewed paper in the American Journal of Physics. Then there was the leaking of the IPCC AR5 documents here, showing how corrupted their thinking is, and how the final product was sanitized. Then there’s the Paris Agreement, watching it unfold, shaking our heads at the inanity of it. Even Dr. James Hansen called it a “fraud”. Then, just two weeks ago, watching President Trump remove the U.S. from it. It was truly a great day, with the bonus of watching all those heads explode.
Some people say that WUWT was a force or a catalyst in contributing to these things happening, but I don’t know. I just did what seemed like the right thing. Dig for the truth behind the headlines, and never, ever, give up.
It’s been a great ride. But, to be honest, I’m facing burnout. I need a break, so that I can continue another 10 years. I have not taken a real vacation from WUWT during the entire time. Ric Werme, who tracks WUWT, I think once said it’s been about 7 years since WUWT went a day without at least one story, and often there are five or six. It’s a lot of work. The ride has personally and professionally had it’s fallout for me. I’ve had clients cancel on me because of my views, and I’ve been through a personal hell too.
But, I continued, and I want to keep contributing, but I need a break to do it. I think I deserve one. Steve McIntyre of ClimateAudit once told me in a face to face conversation that “You and I both have done the work of ten men. I think we’ve given them a good run” (he was referring to the “Hockey Team et al”). Steve has essentially retired form blogging, because he has other pursuits. He feels like he’s done his fair share. I’d say his contribution was monumental.
I still have more stories to tell, I still have more research to do, I still have more to contribute.
One of the great things about WUWT is that we’ve had so many guest authors. This keeps it fresh. But I still have to administer it all. I do it from my phone, my laptop, and my home and office PC. I’ve never really been out of touch from it
Here’s the stats over the past 10+ years.
There’s no other website that focuses on Climate Science that can even come close to that track record. That’s not a boast, but a simple fact of numbers. Many people said I’d fail, that I’d be undone, and there’s been a lot of pressure and outright hatred and smearing directed at me personally to make me quit. I even had an offer once to “buy me out” as a way to get me to stop. I told them to shove it.
I had help getting here, from readers like you, guest authors, and many many scientists who have advised me from behind the scenes. I’m greatly appreciative to all of you for bearing those slings and arrows with me.
What convinced me that I really need a break was a really stupid error I made yesterday. I posted a story thinking it was Wednesday (Hump Day Hilarity) when it was actually Monday (Monday Mirthiness). Readers caught it comments, and I was too tired to notice until hours later. It’s a simple error that has since been corrected, but it’s a wake-up call for me. It’s a clear sign of fatigue.
To do that though, and keep WUWT running, requires help. It’s not without precedence. Back in 2007, Steve McIntyre took a vacation to the desert southwest USA, with a mission in mind, to gather some tree ring core samples of his own to dispute Mann’s findings (though he didn’t say that at the time). Long time readers may recall he asked me to take over ClimateAudit during that break, which I did gladly, and it continued, ready for him when he returned.
I think I can do that here, I’m sure many of our guest authors will step up and our moderators can keep the comments flowing, albeit perhaps not as speedily since we have fewer moderators than we used to have.
I’m asking for two things: help with content/moderating, and some donations, so that I can choose a place to go disconnect, and not worry. I don’t want a staycation, and if that darned Koch Brothers check that many Mann-like people seem to think I’m getting would just show up in the mailbox, I’d not have to ask. There’s another reason too. I have an idea for a temperature data study, along the lines of some of the UHI studies I’ve done in the past, but I’ll need to purchase some equipment to run the experiment. And, when I return (assuming I can get help to keep WUWT running) I want to migrate WUWT to a new web platform. The last overhaul was in September of 2014, and since then things that I keep asking for from wordpress.com keep getting ignored (such as comment editing by end users to fix simple mistakes). I’ve been asking for almost as long as WUWT has been on wordpress, and it’s become clear to me that wordpress.com just doesn’t care because they keep adding social media enhancements rather than real meat and potatoes features. Time to move on to something that works better and requires less time to administer.
In other news, I just finished a new book chapter, it’s at the proof stage at the printers, and it will be available soon. I’ll let you know when it is available.
So, dear readers and contributors, here is what I need:
Thanks for your consideration. Those that want to help with moderation, guest content, and scheduling can either leave a comment or use the contact form to direct message me.
For those that wish to donate towards a break and a new setup and experiment, here’s the link and button. Anything is welcome, no matter how small.
I’m going to leave this post up for a couple of days as the top head post, to make sure casual readers and regulars alike see it.
Thanks, sincerely, to all of you. -Anthony Watts
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June 13, 2017 at 08:19AM
The Post-Paris China Syndrome
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Guest post by David Middleton
I’m beginning to think that President Trump’s wise decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord has induced a new strain of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS): The Post-Paris China Syndrome (PPCS) Two Real Clear Energy articles are the perfect examples of PPCS:
Which Top 3 Polluter Dominates Wind And Solar?
By Zainab Calcuttawala – Jun 12, 2017, 12:40 PM CDT
China, the United States, and India are the most prolific greenhouse gas emitters in the world – in that order. To prevent the earth’s temperatures from rising by 2 degrees Celsius, those three key players will need to begin adopting renewables en masse.
Longtime followers of energy sector news will remember a time just a few years ago when China could now be considered a viable leader for the anti-climate change movement due to its voracious coal diet.
[…]
Firstly, I think there was a typo in this sentence:
Longtime followers of energy sector news will remember a time just a few years ago when China could now not be considered a viable leader for the anti-climate change movement due to its voracious coal diet.
I corrected it in red font. Correction notwithstanding, the only way in which Red China will be a “viable leader for the anti-climate change movement,” is as a profit center. The ChiCom’s will be more than happy to sell all the solar panels that the rest of the world desires to purchase.
Secondly, “anti-climate change movement”… WTF? That’s as idiotic as an “anti-plate tectonics party” or an “anti-entropy entourage.”
Thirdly, Red China’s “coal consumption has been in free fall since 2013″…
According to the
2017 BP Statistical Review of World Energy
, Red China’s coal consumption has declined slightly since 2013… However, “free fall” doesn’t appear to be an apt description. The ChiCom coal diet remains more voracious than the rest of the world combined.
Now back to Ms. Calcuttawala’s article:
The National Geographic reports a 35 GW increase in solar power capacity – equivalent to Germany’s entire power supply – in just 2016.
Well… The National Geographic got the 35 GW right; however, according to the 2017 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, Germany had over 41 GW of solar capacity at the end of 2016 and generated over 648 TWh of electricity in 2016. If Red China’s 35 GW of solar power capacity operated at a 100% capacity factor, it wouldn’t even generate half of Germany’s entire power supply in 2016. I am assuming that Ms. Calcuttawala means generation, not capacity, by the phrase “power supply.”
Now back to Ms. Calcuttawala’s for her utterly shocking (NOT!) conclusion:
China’s communist regime controls domestic wealth and resources, so any nationwide campaign to go green must be recognized and sanctioned by Beijing.
Evaluating the U.S.’ Dedication to planet Earth is a little trickier though.
[…]
Federalism sees the virtue in allowing states and cities to be laboratories of democracy. Leading the development of international green policy, however, requires strong political will at the federal level – which the U.S. lacks.
If only this nation was a Marxist dictatorship, like Red China, we would gladly “make the United States the cleanest Third World country on Earth” (
) in a Quixotic global anti-climate change movement. After slaying climate change, we could then lead the world in a crusade (or jihad, if you prefer) against plate tectonics and entropy!
The second article was not quite so much a target-rich environment for ridicule; but it did include one very large target:
How Trump’s COP21 Promise Became China’s Opportunity
By Rob Edens
June 13, 2017The world was waiting with baited breath to see what Donald Trump would do with the Paris climate agreement, but the reasons that ultimately drove him to abandon it are overwhelmingly domestic. As a candidate, his energy platform centered on the ideas that emissions reductions efforts hurt the American economy, “kill jobs”, and weaken the country’s energy security. After months of deliberation, the now-president decided there is no way to reconcile those “America First” policies with climate commitments that dictate terms to the US energy industry.
It must have come as a surprise, then, when fossil fuel companies came together to lobby the Trump White House not to tear up the pact. A pro-Paris alliance that included Cheniere Energy, Exxon Mobil, and even coal companies like Cloud Peak and Peabody pleaded with the Trump administration in support of the agreement before he decided to withdraw.
[…]
Pleaded? No. Some companies did state that they thought it would be good for business to “keep a seat at the table” because they were concerned that the G-7 Climate Bully might isolate the United States and harm U.S. coal, petroleum and natural gas exports. This turned out to be an even more mythical fear than CAGW.
Now, on to the very large target:
With the US out of the Paris Accords, developing nations are set to lose the billions Washington would have contributed to the Green Climate Fund. With that windfall now off the table, these countries will probably expand their reliance on their natural resources (such as coal), hoping to obtain the Western technology to develop it – currently, only the U.S., Canada and Norway have large-scale CCS projects in operation.
[…]
Mr. Edens then babbles a bit about coal mining companies not being able to export carbon sequestration technology to Third World hellholes… (Maybe the article was more target-rich than I originally thought.)
So… Red China now has an opportunity to what? Pick up the tab for “the billions Washington would have contributed to the Green Climate Fund”? I doubt it.
The ChiCom’s were probably banking on the United States borrowing more money from them, to give to Third World tin horn dictators, so they could buy Red Chinese solar panels, wind turbines and thermal power plants.
This brings us to a lucid article by former Iraq WMD inspector Scott Ritter:
An Indispensable Truth
June 2017 Scott Ritter
President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and his earlier failure, during last month’s Nato summit in Brussels, to reaffirm the collective security arrangements set forth in Article 5 of the alliance’s charter, have given the world a first real taste of America’s new isolationism. While the US’ position as the world’s “indispensable nation” has been in decline for decades, Trump’s actions, a clear manifestation of his policy of “America First,” underline the uncomfortable reality that the world remains incapable of providing any viable option to American leadership.
[…]
As currently configured, both Nato and the Paris Agreement place the US at an economic disadvantage to those with whom they are in supposed agreement — Europe in Nato, India and China in the Paris Agreement. In both cases, American leadership is being paid for by the American taxpayer, and is as such unsustainable, given the political realities of Trump’s presidency, under which the notion of exceptionalism has been superseded by a more transactional concept of fairness, not least in the view of those who elected him.
From Trump’s perspective, Article 5 cannot be blindly endorsed without recognition among Nato members of their funding commitments under Article 3. In the context of the Paris Agreement, Trump believes that greenhouse emission controls must be more equitably spread out among the world’s economies in a manner that does not unduly disadvantage the US.
Trump’s actions have, in fact, reinforced the notion of the US was the world’s “indispensable nation.” The idea of Germany, France, the UK and other Nato members trying to fund a collective defense capability without the US is laughable — the economic costs would be orders of magnitude greater than the 2% GDP being demanded by Trump, while the political cost would be unbearable. Likewise, America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will require the rest of the world to either fix it, or watch it dissolve.
The US has, both in terms of its military and economic capabilities, since been in gradual decline since the end of the Cold War. But this decline has not been accompanied by any parallel ascendancy of note on the part of the rest of the world, either individually or collectively. America remains indispensable on the world stage, largely because there is no one ready, willing or able to stand in its place. The international community has been confronted with the reality of Trump’s negotiating strategy, founded as it is on the notion that one should never enter into a negotiation one is not willing to walk away from. Trump has walked away. How the rest of the world responds will offer a true measure of the current state of American exceptionalism, and American indispensability.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer whose service over a 20-plus-year career included tours of duty in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control agreements, serving on the staff of US General Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War, and later as a chief weapons inspector with the UN in Iraq from 1991-98.
This passage bears repeating:
The international community has been confronted with the reality of Trump’s negotiating strategy, founded as it is on the notion that one should never enter into a negotiation one is not willing to walk away from. Trump has walked away. How the rest of the world responds will offer a true measure of the current state of American exceptionalism, and American indispensability.
“One should never enter into a negotiation one is not willing to walk away from.” This is the heart of “the art of the deal.”
President Reagan walked away from Reykjavik and won the Cold War. President Trump walked away from Paris and will win the war against the Warmunists (anti-climate change movement).
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June 13, 2017 at 07:30AM
That Damnable Ice
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Arctic stops play!
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June 13, 2017 at 07:18AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 